Open Letter to the Emacs Maintainers
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Wait. What? I must be old school then, with my ~12 years of experience, because I think email is much more approachable than some of the modern communication methods. I create text and send it in an email. I get an email back. Repeat until complete.
Or do people really think it's better to go out and sign up for yet another account with Slack (or is that Github? Or Discourse? Or HipChat? Or BitBucket? or...), verify my email (ironic, no?), get into a chat room, try and get a dev's attention in the rolling spam of giffy links... Or perhaps I'll create yet another gitlab issue and pull request, so they can get lost in the thousands of others, due to the lack of organization capability present in most email clients. Yeah, I prefer email, personally.
> the Old Guard and the Next Generation
An excellent way to alienate the people you're trying to get help from.
> put a Code of Conduct in place for all communications on gitlab.
Sigh. This again?
> If Emacs could move onto gitlab and use a pull request workflow
What real benefits does this offer, over an email patch?
If this is the "New Guard", perhaps it's best they are scared away by email.
Also, I hate the pull request workflow; it's a big barrier to entry for people dipping their toes in with small changes. If you're trying to recruit more participants, or encourage an open-source project to open itself up to more participants, why on earth would you adopt a workflow which requires more up-front folderol on the part of the patch submitter? Just let people send in their patches and be gracious about accepting them. You can gently suggest that they start jumping through git branching hoops and other project-specific processes later, when they're already on board and committed to participation.
Codes of conduct are a direct response to ongoing harassment and stalking against various contributors of various open-source projects, followed by inaction on the part of the project maintainers or the excuse of "that just can't handle criticism".
What is so offensive about saying "make it about the code, not about the person" and "don't stalk, dox, or harass people"?
A code of conduct is a signal that juvenile behavior won't be tolerated and that if your code reviewer starts sending you dick pics they'll get banned from the project. It doesn't do anything by itself - if the project maintainers don't follow through it is worthless but like security lights and door locks the signaling value has an effect on people's behavior.
And for the record it protects while males too.
A very common clause in codes of conduct is that people who are identified with a project must uphold the code of contact when they are communicating, even when they do so outside the context of the project. Usually "identified with a project" is defined loosely enough that it can be used fairly indiscriminately. It has happened that people who voiced objectionable ideas outside the context of a project have been forcibly removed from those projects.
For some, this is a triumph of justice. For others (and I include myself in this camp) it is further fostering an "us" vs "them" viewpoint, vilifying those whose ideas differ. Interpersonal conflict is difficult and requires considerable skill to moderate. A code of conduct, while it can simply be a communication of the ideals that the project strives towards, can be used as a scaffolding to attack those who we disagree with and wish to punish.
Perhaps it is generational, and the new guard will eventually win this battle one funeral at a time. But as a politically liberal curmudgeon, 'codes of conduct' feel like the beta release of 'safe spaces'.
please go back to Pokemon Go-ing on my lawn... quietly. Daddy has to focus on writing code.
In other words you've never felt harassed. That's a good thing but it doesn't mean your situation is all encompassing.
>The same is true for the types of offenses typical of a code of conduct.
Also a good thing. How many times have you rejected a patch because someone was harassing another member of your community?
I do not support putting words into someone else's mouth, particularly on socially explosive (hence the discussion in the first place) or ideologically driven issues.
Asking if someone's ever been harassed is one thing. Stating point blank that they haven't, crosses a line. Your interlocutor knows their personal history. You don't. Don't presume. It's a cheap shot, often derailing.
>In other words you've never felt harassed.
Do you fail to see the problem here?
>Also a good thing. How many times have you rejected a patch because someone was harassing another member of your community?
Does one need a written down, politically charged, potentially divisive document in legalese to say "I don't want to share my toys with the class bully"?
>Does one need a written down, politically charged, potentially divisive document in legalese to say "I don't want to share my toys with the class bully"?
Apparently yes given the number of abusive people that have been active members of a lot of communities which now have codes of conduct.
Try believing that I could have been harassed, but feel that a code of conduct would not have prevented nor resolved the problem.
But hey, https://xkcd.com/386/
I did not say anything about 'what happened', I was speaking of 'belief' which was part of your sentence.
I'm not claiming I've been harassed, nor am I denying it. I find the term a bit vague, as it runs a spectrum from minor trolling which I think we've nearly all experienced (and perhaps committed), to real world doxing and stalking and physical violence. So let's pick something much more concrete.
Rape. Since even that has a somewhat ill defined colloquial use, I'll specifically restrict to a narrow and somewhat historic subset: The act of a man forcing coitus upon a woman.
There is recent precedent for this in the Tor community. I don't know enough of the specifics of that to claim my hypotheticals reflect any of the reality of that case, but I think it's a useful way to make this seem less abstract.
I don't believe that the Tor project had a specific 'code of conduct'. Despite that, they seem to have been able to report appelbaum's behavior as inappropriate, and remove him from the project. This suggests a CoC is not a requirement -- it is not necessary. Does anyone claim a CoC would have prevented those events from happening? -- it is not sufficient.
Let's imagine that there was a CoC. I don't think any of the CoCs I've seen specifically mention rape (nor murder or pedophilia - my original examples). I find it hard to believe that there was (or even could be) a woman who was ready to contribute to Tor, but due to previous experience with rape, and the lack of it being mentioned in the CoC, decided this was not an environment where she was welcome.
trigger warnings, safe spaces, and codes of conduct have all become strangely familiar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCU_(film) , but bland ways of marking some tribal identity. But they do not seem to actually achieve any of their stated goals.
I've previously been involved in organizing one tech conference, where a single member of the admin board felt it was urgent that we nail this down, and it became a time consuming and long recurring part of our calendar, which to my mind achieved little beyond bike shedding. None of us are strongly opposed to the core idea. We do want a healthy vibrant community. But if that's all we wanted, we'd have joined some other social forum, be it a book club, a sports team, or whatever suits you. Instead we joined a code base, a conference or some other technology focused community, and advancing that specific goal is actually priority #1. To the extent a community helps us to advance that goal, wonderful. But to the extent that certain members of that community actively hurt progress, we're glad to see them excluded. Sometimes we decide that exclusion is necessary due to social practices like criminal activity ( Hans Reiser ) sometimes it's due to some (race/sex/other)-ism which is taboo. But one of the great things about the way we do online collaboration ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_... ) is that I've gotten to meet and collaborate with a lot of people who are WAY outside my usual social bubble. And it's allowed me to build a tolerance and respect for people who I would otherwise have probably dismissed too early. Satanic polytheist -- have you seen his filesystem API? Blind transexual with a diaper fetish - built that 9 dimensional rubics cube app in 4k of assembly. CoCs set a dangerous precedent of deciding in advance who's one of us, and who is not, based on things other than tech skills. I've got enough of that in my corporate and real world life. This is the internet. 99.9% of the time the absolute worst that can happen is that you get your feelings hurt. To prematurely constrain it to prevent that, is a medicine more dangerous than the disease.
You accept that you need to exclude people for the health of the community but you continue to reject CoCs because....you once were involved in a board with someone that took a long time to establish one?
I personally think a lot of the push back is from jerks fearing that they will be pushed out of the only communities that have dealt with them up to now.
There are stereotypes about programmers and their social skills and if over 20 years programming has taught me anything it is that they portray way too many individuals involved in it accurately. A lot of people do need to be told exactly what is or isn't appropriate. A lot of people do need something like a CoC to feel comfortable reporting abuse.
Otherwise you have owner arguing with contributor drama trying to explain implied etiquette. Of course unless the transgression was severe the owner is forced to be lenient for fear of appearing overly authoritarian (which would drive away some contributors), but they can't be entirely forgiving because the transgression might drive away some other (or same) people. CoC removes this bargaining.
The question is, why would you care? What the person does in their personal life is outside the scope of the project.
Basically - the sorts of people who women have to get conference organisers to have a quiet word with and/or ban don't stop being assholes on the Internet. If anything, they become worse, and it's easier to hide that behaviour when it winds up being in large part through private messages and communication systems other than the project's official ones.
(If you were associated with a volunteer group irl, and you started harassing your co-volunteers through Facebook and email and text messages, you'd hopefully be kicked out. Various CoC debates show that many people think that if the volunteer group is online, such behaviour should be excused.)
A Code of Conduct isn't magic, but it does provide social proof that the project leaders at least thought of the issues that can affect their contributors, and can provide a yardstick to judge whether a project is likely to at least listen about issues affecting contributors who are members of minorities.
[0] https://blog.randi.io/2015/12/31/the-developer-formerly-know...
Is a big part of the problem. A lot participants don't want to be seen to be rocking the boat so they let stuff slide that they really shouldn't in the effort to not be "that person".
A formal code of conduct gives people the support up front to come forward with complaints about other members.
Hardly: a code of conduct is juvenile behaviour. It's like when I was a little kid and drafted a huge constitution for my amazing awesome cool club — that was just me.
Adults don't need to write down a code of conduct, because they adhere to an unwritten code of conduct. Children whinge, 'you shouldn't do that, because this says not to!'; adults don't do that, because they know that they oughtn't — and they refrain from associating with others who do. Children want their clique to gang up on the people they don't like; adults simply walk away from those people.
Childhood is all about, 'you can't'; adulthood is all about 'I won't.'
FWIW, I have yet to see a code of conduct that really says anything beyond "don't be a jerk, and act like a grownup". It might be silly if it also told me how to dress on Tuesdays and who to vote for, but in reality they rarely or never say anything beyond "don't be a jerk, and act like a grownup." I also have no problem with someone else reminding me of that, because I have to remind myself of that all the time. I don't know why anyone would be offended by such a thing.
It really is magical to see these people that think that everyone are supposedly always courteous to each other throw such a shit fit over codifying that into an official policy.
Because no adult has ever harassed another in a programming community? I would love it if everyone behaved politely and courteously, however this is not currently what is happening in some projects. Having a CoC is merely a preventative measure to curb bad behavior for those who can't self-police.
Feel free to waste your breath trying to convince me that CoCs aren't needed.
I do see a lot of complaints about heated arguments about having a code of conduct, and plenty of evidence of those arguments existing.
My university participated in a study that found their anti-alcohol posters appeared to increase student drinking. Admittedly, with not as large a data set as desired, so it's also possible they simply did nothing. You find this with a huge array of both government and non-profit efforts. Most of the time, the things we try to improve society simply don't work, or not to the degree desired.
Pretty sure there are a LOT of women who would strongly disagree.
> Simple Definition of harass: to annoy or bother (someone) in a constant or repeated way; to make repeated attacks against (an enemy).
Incorrect. Sexual harassment doesn't require repeated conduct, though repeated conduct is more likely to be harassment (both because it is more likely to create a hostile environment simply because of the pervasiveness, and because it is more likely that the actor will be in a position where they should reasonably have known that it was unwelcome.)
I suppose that means you win.
I leave it to you to figure out which is which.
Code of conducts are a sane effort to highlight behavior that won't be tolerated, such that it's written down and no longer implicit.
That being said, one is free to disagree with the content of a particular code of conduct if the content does not appeal, but a mere presence of one should not result in becoming dismissive of a project.
I'd also love to see actual stats showing a CoC improved a project on objective criteria. Less defects or something.
> Sigh. This again?
+1. Whenever I see a Code of Conduct I think, 'these people aren't going to be welcoming, and indeed there's a very good chance that they will slam the door in my face.'
Do you have a burning desire to call people "honkey" in code reviews? Can't live without calling people stupid for being old/young? Is being prohibited from stalking other contributors so you can call their workplace and get them in trouble a huge problem for you?
This sounds like unjustified whining without any basis in actual fact or experience... iow "get off my lawn damn kids!!!".
A code of conduct is usually just shorthand for "don't be a jerk, be a professional".
"We will not act on complaints regarding ‘reverse’ -isms, including ‘reverse racism,’ ‘reverse sexism,’"
That they even use the term "reverse racism" is telling. This is from a company that, in internal training, has anti-white material. "This is not work for white people", "biggest barriers to progress are white women". https://m.imgur.com/7YaVYUx?r
I don't particularly care, but if you're going to be inclusive, it should be technically inclusive, not loaded with politics. I'd bet there's a lot of people like me, thinking a egalitarian would be far less of an issue though I don't like curtailing expression, abrasive it may be, nor policing people in their personal lives.
No CoC is ever going to stop a jerk from being a jerk. It will just prompt the jerks to work around it and cause even more headaches for the contributors. Worse, it brings about those who only want to criticize the CoC, either because it's too strict, or too lenient.
Taking the time to address critiques on a CoC is time taken away from actually developing on a project and building a community who cares about the project, not the CoC.
Right but it will remove the jerks from the community.
>It will just prompt the jerks to work around it and cause even more headaches for the contributors.
How do you imagine this happening?
>Taking the time to address critiques on a CoC is time taken away from actually developing on a project and building a community who cares about the project, not the CoC.
Spending time complaining about a set of guidelines that say don't be a jerk is time taken away from actually developing on a project. Except the people doing it are complaining about not being allowed to be jerks.
How, exactly? The CoC does nothing but codify someone's values for a community. It doesn't actually do anything, other than state a set of unacceptable behaviors and potential solutions to those behaviors. It's still up to the contributors to actually act, and if your community is good in the first place, they won't need the prompting of a CoC to act against jerks.
> How do you imagine this happening?
Easily - a CoC leaves a lot of grey areas, which provide plenty of room for griefing and harassment which isn't technically against the CoC. And if an action falls within that grey area, someone, or several someones, has to take time and not just say "this is bad", they have to tie that judgement back into the CoC somehow. It's even worse when there are consequences in the CoC for "lack of enforcement of the CoC" - being perceived as doing nothing can remove someone as a contributor. It's worth remembering, we're (mostly) developers, not lawyers.
> Except the people doing it are complaining about not being allowed to be jerks.
Are most of the people in this thread of comments complaining about not being able to harass or abuse other people? Or are they raising concerns about the ambiguous nature of these CoCs, and the perceived unnecessity? More specifically, how much time did Matz have to take out of his development schedule just to address the complaints against Ruby's CoC?
By giving members of the community a place to point to which explains why exactly they are excluding someone and a set of reasons why they will exclude others in the future.
>Easily - a CoC leaves a lot of grey areas, which provide plenty of room for griefing and harassment which isn't technically against the CoC.
Like what? Saying it could happen then when asked for examples replying with "it could happen" isn't exactly convincing for it being possible.
>Are most of the people in this thread of comments complaining about not being able to harass or abuse other people?
Well I see a few complaining that they don't feel comfortable in a space where one exists so for those people it probably is though I doubt they'd use those words to explain their actions. I see others complaining about their existence but not really providing any arguments against them other than "they aren't needed" or "they don't work".
I mean your whole argument here is that it should just happen as the CoC outlines. But history isn't on your side as open source in general has been historically full of harassment both sexual and non-sexual and various levels of abuse. To the point that it's actually celebrated from some of the bigger names in the space.
As if the maintainers/leaders can't remove someone from the community if they wish to, without the need of codes.
P.S. By the way, the Rust Code of Conduct [1] states:
> Remarks that moderators find inappropriate, whether listed in the code of conduct or not, are also not allowed.
I honestly can't see peoples objections to CoC. If as you say it doesn't actually change anything why do you object?
> This freedom from the inanities of corporate life attracts proponents of Agile Methodologies, and scares the begeebers (you can’t use the word ‘shit’ in a professional paper) out of traditionalists.
This isn't a healthy attitude to have toward an open-source project -- as a "New Guarder" myself, I would be very sad to see Emacs contributions dry up.
There are plenty of established projects that don't use a "pull request" workflow, Emacs only recently migrated to Git; I don't have the discussion from ESR around migrating Emacs to Git handy, but it was a pretty slow process to "bring Emacs into the 21st century" and encourage contributions from new devs. There is simply no way the entire development workflow would change based on this critique. Never mind the fact that Emacs is RMS' baby, the suggestions are so far-fetched as to be laughable.
> the vast majority of modern software developers do not want to use email as their communication channel
This sounds more like "the vast majority of software developers like me" and I'm not sure how much value there is in debating something like that. Mark me down for "disagree". I have, in the past, skipped over projects when the only means of contribution or discussion is "sign up for our Slack/Gitter/etc. channel".
Being able to setup your own server is a benefit, not a negative. Much like twitter it seems to be another regressions from an open internet to corporate control.
The only positive I can see is rich text, but that has extremely limited value in a chat program. History is nice too but IME too painful to use (scroll, load, scroll, load, scroll, load) to be of any practical benefit.
Slack has search for history, which is huge. No more "eh we talked about it".
Onprem is great. But it's a hindrance for quick adoption.
I'd love if an open system would win. I've no love for Slack and don't use it. (Have used hipchat; what a UI mess like all of their products.) But I guess no one stepped up with an IRC-based platform that could compete.
For functionality like that it sounds like a mailing list would fit the use case better.
> Onprem is great. But it's a hindrance for quick adoption.
It's not either/or. Think of git, you can use a hosted server or a private one. The ability to host your own server doesn't hinder anyone.
Then you're looking at an email with the visual noise of recipients and whitespace and signatures, and if the UI is really bad (mailing list websites, for example), every message is viewed in isolation without the responses.
In short: Slack is what you get when you have a team managing an IRC server with all the nice plugins and bots and building a single UI that does everything. You can spend your time setting up the same thing, or you can go to Slack.
Why not make IRC easier to setup?
* offline messages * full history access and search * fancy authentication schemes
There are some who try to build a full experience similar to what Slack is proposing; I'm thinking of IRCCloud for instance. But then instead of being stuck inside Slack, you're stuck inside IRCCloud (note: for the nice features, not for the basic messages). What we'd need is an open source IRCCloud server and client, that would then become the new standard... then only can IRC compete.
So, it's not just a software issue, it's a protocol issue. Which is why XMPP was born, and Matrix was born, and all other IM protocols were born. But none of them has reached the point where they can overwhelm all the other ones combined, so in the meantime people converge towards a centralized system because it's easier to be up-to-date.
A webbased irc client that doesn't suck (and keeps a channel log) would probably be a good solution to making things easy for people unfamiliar with IRC.
Some sort of one click setup for a channel on Freenode or a similar network would probably be pretty popular - especially if you could get some useful bots from the get go (like git ones) .
> I don’t think it would be right for Emacs to use github.com. I don’t even think it is right for ENSIME to use github, but I’m scared of moving in-case we lose contributor momentum. The FSF gave github.com a bad score and it’s not libre, which makes me nervous.
This is what scares me about the power of GH too. But let's be honest, as this came up with Stuart Sierra yesterday as well in his post on open source rewards stupid bug fixes and not hard work.
https://stuartsierra.com/2016/07/18/apathy-of-the-commons
If the work is boring, people won't do it.
A corollary: if the tooling sucks, people avoid the tooling, and then things stay on the backburner and never complete.
I hate the whole Slack/Gitter/IM channel as well, but the idea of avoiding tooling (e.g. git), which did take Emacs forever, leads to far less contributors like me.
Can we at least work on documenting contributor workflow? How do I build an Emacs test environment and harness system? These things must be bookmarked to emacs-devel and other mailing lists on MARC archives and what-not, as I have yet to find even good blog posts (not that I say that as a standard, but in this case more of what I don't want) of how to set this up.
I do not expect a Github wiki linking to a Gitter channel about setting up a Docker dev containter for emacs-25.x, but can we at least have better tooling for pulling from git repos and running the test suite? Document it in the manual?
It is documented. Look at the file "CONTRIBUTE" in the root of the Emacs source.
That file is also cited in the manual: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Co...
And that manual page is the first Google result for "contributing to emacs".
This nice, but I have screwed around with open source for a long time. So, things like:
> Ref: The "Tips" Appendix in the Emacs Lisp Reference.
Example Novice (not me in this case): How do I get to that?
> After you have downloaded the repository source, you should read the file INSTALL.REPO for build instructions (they differ to some extent from a normal build).
> Ref: http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/emacs
Example Novice (not me in this case): What am I downloading from there? I guess I will go visit that page.
> See the existing ChangeLog files for format and content. Note that, unlike some other projects, we do require ChangeLogs also for documentation, i.e. Texinfo files.
> Ref: "Change Log Concepts" node of the GNU Coding Standards Info Manual, for how to write good log entries.
Example Novice (not me in this case): What the hell is Texinfo?
My point is this is a good high-level view. It asks me to visit half a dozen different manuals and asks I fill out a CLA.
I am not saying this is even god awful by open source standards, it is good. The problem is I am on the tail end of Linux/FLOSS culture, where a lot of people want more tooling and less learning. I know that is asking a lot. I give counter-examples in this space (Fedora, Mozilla, Start-a-flame-with-Node-NPM-dev-groups) and more focus on onboarding and get on the ground running.
Re your point on Google, I am embarassed. I looked up on DDG, and with !g for Google "emacs volunteer" "emacs hack" initially and never found these documents at first. I later did, but cloning the code is not where I see the issue here.
This stuff does not inhibit me from contributing. The problem with Linux and emacs is I must spam many thousands of people with git patches via email, and I want a way to build a reliable system in a VM or container without shitting all over my system emacs (it is a shell and editor for me) and finding a mentor so I do not get yelled at for spamming THOUSANDS of veteran Emacs devs I respect. I do not want every to use the damn Vagrantfile, but I would an emacs novice devel list or wiki or anything where I can build up to being one of those people, with simplified environments, and admit I need training wheels to contribute to one of the oldest and most important active FLOSS projects in existence. I know I demand a lot, but you seem to know this stuff. In my position, would you contribute a patch without anyone else helping you just given this material and not expect nastygrams back?
Yes, we have a CONTRIBUTE page that links to a dozen manuals is a good start, but is the kind of reaction that leads to the blog posts we see here. I do not mean to target you, but git clone I can do. Moving from that to being a member of emacs-devel that is not yelled at to the stop screwing up is different.
I find that more intimidating and think that is something worth focusing on.
To be honest, the 'less tooling, more learning' is exactly why I prefer the GNU culture. It keeps inessential complexity down. A lot of people are broadly in my side of the boat, and it's a major part of why we're here...
Again, this on me. I listened to Wiegley talk, and wanted to get involved. I looked into one weekend, but did not follow up. I need to stay committed. I like the history and culture of GNU as an outsider, and this is why I wanted to get more involved in Emacs.
edit: Most of the floss world respects people who take the time to learn something before asking questions. So long as you dig about and frame an intelligent question backed by openly available information (did you RTFM :) ), the people worth respecting aren't going to trash you. I don't contribute to emacs myself, it does pretty much everything I could ever need. I would be happy to help you with floss norms and so forth... contact info in my profile. :-)
I already emailed you. Thanks for the encouragement.
I'm not a fan of this, but lets not act like A LOT of new projects aren't going in this direction because they are.
> the suggestions are so far-fetched as to be laughable.
Yeah, considering git still is a source of contention on the list changing anything in their process seems nuts.
> I have, in the past, skipped over projects when the only means of contribution or discussion is "sign up for our Slack/Gitter/etc. channel".
I understand - and i'm not a fan, but that goes both ways - lot of folks have skipped over projects when the primary forms of communication are mailing lists/irc - stuff that is foreign to them or seems like a hassle.
I do think that stuff like emacs does get hurt by their processes - moving to git was a big step. The devel list is less than welcoming and at times very hostile.
My two cents come from two experiences: submitting a patch to an open source GNU project on GNU Savannah, and asking for directions to the emacs-devel mailing list in order to read the GNU Emacs codebase (because I want to do weird/neat/crazy/nasty stuff with Emacs buffers).
So:
1) Gnu Savannah. It's okay. It's a bit weird but it does everything it should do. Most open source development happens on GitHub nowadays, and this basically means that savannah is weird to work with. Imho it should just be more documented, possibly in a "visual way" (ie, video).
2) The emacs-devel mailing list. It just works. The access barrier is low (can you receive emails? can you send emails? then you can come hack with us) and it really is that simple. I really don't understand what people don't get about mailing lists.
For short, most of the article says that emacs development has not enough colours and and buzzwords.
p.s: GNU Emacs the whole GNU project had a "code of conduct" way before this was the "cool" thing: it's the GNU Manifesto.
I thought the cliche was meant to be that old developers don't know new tech and don't want to know.
Now it seems that there are even more new developers that don't want to know old tech.
You're argument is predicated on the idea that because the "new guard" don't need to rely on IRC and email anymore that the "old guard" who have been doing this since the only way to contribute to projects WAS IRC and email need to change their ways to accommodate others.
That isn't a bad thing at all, in fact most people (myself included) think it would be a good idea, but you have to remember that the FSF isn't just a software organization, but it is also more or less a political organization as well, and their processes will reflect the values of those whose interests align. While Emacs indeed does have new leadership under John Wiegley, as a whole, the project cannot change without the blessing of the GNU elders.
I feel your point might loose a bit of steam when your main argument for moving towards a pull-request model is based on "this is how they do it on Github", given that as you acknowledged, it is a non-free project that the FSF looks unfavorably on.
This isn't true. It's just that the GNU elders are elders for a reason - their opinion is respected, explicitly sought out, and generally correct.
I'm not saying that experience is worthless, I'll be the first in defending it, but I also know, first hand, that as we get a little older, we get too used to our ways, even if there are others more efficient, that require change.
I would suggest reconsidering the suggestion to use proprietary software and fad approaches. Consider digging a bit deeper before criticizing.
Just because something isn't up to date with the latest bling doesn't mean it's bad, wrong, or unwise.
I agree that email is not a VCS, but it's worked relatively well for 30 years. I would carefully consider where the actual problem is.
[0] A code of conduct seems unnecessary.
How does one know which of those four channels to use? Are people expected to follow all four of them if they want to keep informed about the project?
Wouldn't it be easier to have just one channel that is universally available? Email would be the obvious choice, and since you have to provide an email address to sign up at Github, you are already implicitly requiring your contributors to have email.
http://sachachua.com/blog/2015/12/2015-12-10-emacs-chat-john...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udNb4E4smbM
To the consternation of many, I love Emacs. I even eschewed tmux for multi-term, trying to move to notmuch.el for Gmail-esque email, and even consider moving away from a dedicated PDF reader and consider doc-mode if not for its lagginess (it is doing impressive stuff).
But how do I contribute to Emacs?
I like the Old Guard, I do, but I think there is something to be said for a few orgs philosophy, not implementation, such as Fedora, Mozilla, and their attempts to onboard volunteer effort.
They have good wiki material, they have the badge process to show hip ways to contribute. I too find the latter kind of off-putting, but my point is they try to signal to novices like me what to do and what of those things can be valued and by whom. I recently set up an account with Fedora and will try to work on the project not because I particularly fond of the distro (I prefer Debian, which I also want to start pitching in on), but as a culture I want to understand them and leverage their community handling tactics and use it later. They seem to know something, I want to know how they got there, why, and immitate it elsewhere needed.
Traditional projects have far less material on this. I appreciate a good static page/wiki/doc system more in the post-JS monstrosity that is the web (again, scary is the number of sites weekly I cannot visit with JS blocking to READ DOCUMENTATION; Emacs is thankfully one, or any GNU project, I worry about in this regard), but we find no good information about how to get involved with Emacs.
I have intended to email John about this. Can we consider this post to mean I am not the only one at a loss?
And a smile gripe: I have started to use ensime for a Scala Coursera course, and if the author of that post is here, I find your docs polished but confusing. Basic concepts (I need to really focus on sbt-mode to get interactive, ensime does not help with that and other stuff, you need to set up SBT first for ensime integration and the server) is there, but is linked to GH issue tracking and other stuff. You insist on reading the FAQ section that links to that, but I ended very tired one night going in circles. Resting AND trying again next day I got what you guys did, but you will lose idiots like me every time.